Time of Reckoning
by SennRamius
Summary: Spin-off story. New main character, new setting, new threat. Jack Bauer makes a small appearance. This will be a few story "hours" long with the possibility of a new full-fledged day.
1. Prologue

The long hunt for an international terrorist is over. After years on the run, Armalah al-Maut has just been captured. The work of SEAL team lead Lieutenant Commander Thaddeus "Thud" Davison, however, is only just beginning as the threat presented by the notorious mastermind is about to be replaced with another...

When a brazen full-frontal assault breaks out, Davison must do what he can to protect his men and fight his way through an invading force. As extracting information from al-Maut takes a backseat he must find out who could mount such an attack and what the connection with the captive is... if he survives.

_Spin-off story. New main character, new setting, new threat. Jack Bauer makes a small appearance._

_This will be a few story "hours" long with the possibility of a new full-fledged day._

**PROLOGUE**

"We can do this. The time is right and we have the resources."

Edward Holborn looked around the room to feel people's reactions. He's said enough at this point. He only wanted everyone to agree immediately so they could go ahead without further loitering.

"You understand what we're talking about, right? Once we commit to this and go through with it there is no turning back. We'll be fugitives forever. We'll be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives."

The man who said that was Gabriel Worthington. He'd been working with Holborn out of necessity mostly. They both wanted a similar thing but he thought going on a full-scale war would create more, and worse problems than it would solve.

"A small price to pay. Sacrifices need to happen but a lot of people will be happier."

Worthington remained silent. If they were ever found he was the one with the most to lose.

"Are you getting cold feet now?" Holborn made a step closer to Worthington. "They caused this! The recession... they gambled with the people's money. Over the last year more people have done themselves in than the last ten years. Sacrifices need to be made for things to change."

"All these years", Holborn continued, "they've made people lose their homes. They've stolen the pensions of future generations. Politicians have said time and again they'll punish them yet no one has yet been fined or gone to prison".

Worthington could see his associate was clearly fuming just by talking about the recession. In his own mind things were a little more complicated than finding the heroes and the bad guys in a story. The recession was caused by a complex economic system that had been hanging by a thread for decades and finally broke when too much money was owed by too many people. But he agreed on one of Holborn's argument. Some people had borrowed more money than others and to this day no one has touched them.

It struck him again why he had agreed to enter this partnership. The man in front of him had decades of battle and running black operations in foreign countries under his belt and he looked the part too. There were certain traits that he could bring to the table that Worthington couldn't. What Worthington did have was the resources to make this unthinkable idea a reality. All he lacked of is a tactician and a motivator. If anyone could convince him to proceed with this plan was the built, tattooed man in the khaki uniform that he was conversing with.

"You'd better be right. I don't want to think about what will happen if you aren't", he finally said.


	2. Chapter 1

**THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 PM AND 10 PM, EASTERN STANDARD TIME**

Everyone stood up when President Joseph Aguilar entered the room after Secretary of Defense Rebecca Jones.

"As you were", said the president and proceeded to sit on his designated seat. Jones took the seat between him and Lieutenant General Chris Wright, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"The chopper is approaching the land right now Mr. President" said the General and tapped the tablet he was holding. The large wall mounted screen changed from a White House emblem to a top-down night vision live feed looking down a helicopter approaching a coast line. The video feed was provided by a satellite 500 kilometers above the Earth, leased to CIA for the duration of the operation.

"Estimated time of arrival is twenty minutes sir", Wright said.

**4:02**

**Banaadir,** **Somalia**

It was two hours before dawn. A Navy CH-47 Chinook flew over the coast just past Mogadishu.

In it, a DEVGRU team of seven were patiently waiting to set foot on the ground just outside the Somali capital. President Aguilar addressed them over a video conference forty minutes ago and stressed the importance of this undertaking. Their mission was simple: capture Armalah al-Maut, the long elusive terrorist mastermind. They were to neutralize only if any members of the team or innocent civilians were in immediate danger.

Three days ago, the CIA received a tip that al-Maut, one of its five most wanted, had last emerged in a safe house in Somalia. After six years of living off the grid, this may have been the only chance to capture or kill one of the most notorious minds responsible for a great deal of bombings and shootings in many parts of the world. Failure could lead to many more years before the U.S. government got new intel with a confirmed location and countless lives would have been lost in the meantime.

Pablo "Shredder" Scherdinger looked at his watch. In a bit less than twenty minutes they would be on the ground. In the years he'd been a DEVGRU member, he had seen his fair share of action, his team had to make life-and-death split second decisions in nearly every deployment. Yet he wouldn't have it any other way. He felt this is his way of making the world safer.

"More terrorist hunt...", he mumbled. "Iceman," he then said out loud, "will you let me be the one to put a bullet in this twat's head... sir?"

The man with the callsign "Iceman" was team lead Lieutenant Commander Thaddeus Davison. He received that nickname about the same time when his colleagues were convinced he probably hadn't cracked a joke or replied to one with another or smiled for as long as he's remembered being in special forces. Tonight, these men were under his command; and under his responsibility.

"Why? You want to tell your friends and family about it?" Davison said referring to the team's operational secrecy.

"I'm silent like a fish, Commander. I just want to get the satisfaction of it, is all".

"Get in line, Shredder", said one of the other team members, Dylan Hurst. "Finder's keeper's. Unless you want to clear all the rooms and take out all the X-rays yourself before you have a chance on the main dish."

"Might as well charge in there and go berserk on their asses and show you pussies the ropes", Scherdinger replied.

"Alright, enough. You all know we should capture al-Maut alive." Iceman interrupted. "We're touching down soon. Get prepared".

Everyone in the passenger section remained silent. They all trusted and respected Iceman.

Davison removed a folded transparent material from the right leg pocket of his uniform and quickly unfolded it to its full size of an A4 paper. He slid his index finger across the bottom and the surface came to life.

The BendPlex E150 was one of the few of its kind. Four layers of graphene made up its work surface, and its motherboard and its quad-core processing unit were also made of graphene. The material was a two dimensional surface made exclusively of carbon atoms that made it flexible as well as durable. Although similar future products would be eventually commercialized, this one was purely military issue to assist with special forces team deployments.

Davison brought up his target's personal file. Armalah al-Maut. That was what she was referred to in the Arabic press which had just borrowed the the nickname the British tabloids had given her - the Widow of Death.

Born Sally Hughes in Newham, East London, to a white working class family, converted to Islam at age 17 and met Chechen refugee Anzor Dudayev one year later. They married the year after that.

Two years later Dudayev travelled to the U.S. on a business trip. Surveillance footage caught him enter a bus in Chicago wearing a rucksack. It was during the 11-week terrorist attack spree across U.S. cities orchestrated by Abu Fayed. Everyone on that bus was killed.

Hughes then went on to make a statement about how kind her husband was and that he would never have done such a callous thing.

"Thanks for setting the record straight", Davison thought, "because everyone up until that point thought your husband was a murderous fucking pig".

Hughes had one child with Dudayev. She came under investigation by the police and a year later she vanished. Since then, the CIA has linked her to many terrorist attacks in Africa and Asia. Hughes took responsibility for many of those, including the bombing of the British High Commission building in Nairobi in 2016.

There had been no known recent photos of her until the CIA received an anonymous tip from an untraceable email account that included a photo of someone matching her description sitting at a cafe in Mogadishu. That was when the DEVGRU team got the call.

A drone strike wouldn't be sufficient as they didn't have confirmation of Hughes's whereabouts so there had to be boots on the ground. Also it was imperative that she was taken alive as the same anonymous tip made mention of impending attacks in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Sergeant Dylan Hurst, callsign Mystic, was sitting right next to Davison. "Call me sexist, boss, but... so young and pretty yet she's capable of so much hate and death".

"Death comes in all shapes and sizes, sergeant. Even from those who spawn life from their own bodies", Davison replied.

"One minute" the pilot's voice was heard.

The chopper homed into the drop off location, several hundred metres far from the safe house al-Maut was believed to be in. The Chinook's hatch door opened and the team came out, weapons on the ready.

"Team is on the ground", the pilot said through the radio.

"Drop your NODs", Iceman said. Everyone lowered the night vision goggles they were wearing on their forehead, over their eyes. The world became brighter with various shades of green.

"Let's move."

**21:23**

**The White House Situation Room**

The screen showed seven glowing dots moving across slowly.

The president exhaled. "Just to think that I won't be making any statements about this if they succeed capturing her."

Secretary Jones looked at him from across the table and nodded. This was a full-black op. No journalist, no ordinary civilian knew that they were onto al-Maut. If she was captured she would be taken to a secret detention facility for augmented interrogation. If the government made a public statement about her capture, there would be no stopping the human rights lawyers, the press and the ACLU from screaming that she should have a fair trial and if found guilty imprisoned.

The involved members of Aguilar's administration had agreed on one thing: there was no scenario under which she would serve time in a female prison and then would go free and most likely back to her current life. House arrest for life would cost too much manpower and taxpayer money. Who would give her work? She would have to be supported with food stamps. The British wanted her over the bombing in Nairobi but Aguilar brought up Dudayev and his bus bombing. They could be present during the interrogation if they wanted. When all is said and done what's important is that she is captured now. As for what would happen next, he'd cross that bridge when he got there.

The way everyone privy to this operation saw it was that there's only one viable option. Al-Maut was to be intensively interrogated until there was nothing the interrogation teams could get out and then spend the rest of her life without seeing the light of day ever again.

**Banaadir, Somalia**

Caution was of utmost importance; not only might there be traps around the safe house but the building itself could have been rigged with explosives; if anyone inside noticed the team coming, they might not hesitate to blow everyone to kingdom come; the team being inside the house or not. They should also not disregard the probability of Hughes' s kid being inside. They would go in silently with suppressors on their weapons.

"Red is in position", Hurst's voice sounded on the radio.

"Red take the door", Iceman said in a low voice.

They were outside a walled compound with a metal door. The lock wasn't anything sophisticated, at least nothing that Mystic's lock pick wouldn't handle. In 30 seconds the lock succumbed. He slowly started opening the door and his team-mate, Ghost, lifted his assault rifle scanning the area inside. He was the first to walk in followed by Mystic.

"Clear."

"Move up", Iceman said pointing at the house's entrance door. The building had three floors just as the satellite photos had shown. It was quite likely there would be a basement too. Satellite imagery also showed a rear entry door.

"Blue and Green, go round the back to the other door".

Four men from the team broke off and started traversing the house from different directions hugging the walls.

"Blue one," Shredder's voice sounded. "X-ray left. He's not seen us."

"This is Green. X-ray spotted."

The bad guys are always expecting someone, Iceman thought. "Take them out".

Almost at the same time, two bullets flew into the heads of the unsuspecting armed guards.

"Blue in position" said Shredder.

"Green in position". That was "Demon".

"Take a look under the door. Red, do the same here"

It was Shredder's turn. He quickly removed a snake scope camera from a pocket in his uniform and fit it under the door. Demon did the same on the other side.

"Looks clear, no X-rays", said Shredder

"No signs of hostiles, sir."

"Copy that. Pick the locks"

In seconds, all teams were inside the house.

**04:35**

Sally Hughes looked at the clock.

"What's up?" said the man lying next to her, half awake.

"I don't know," she replied. "Look, no one knows that we're here, right?"

"Again, no. No one. I'm pretty sure that none of those hosting us know who you even are."

"Asif, I've got a bad feeling. One of these days something will happen. It may not be today or this week but something will."

"Just relax. A few more days and then we're off to Tanzania", said Asif and stroked her hair.

"The sooner we leave here, the better." She paused for a second. "What will we do about the prisoner?"

Asif exhaled. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Shall we get some sleep now? It will be dawn in about an hour."

"Yeah, alright. It's just kinda weird you know... he just isn't talking no matter what we've done to him so far. I want to know that we've exhausted, you know, all of our options before we dispose of him."

The mystery man was found watching their hideout three weeks ago. They held him at gunpoint and brought him in the house. Locked inside a room with only a small hole in a wall, they'd beat him up into a pulp and once he had shown signs of healing they'd beat him again. No amount of beating, though, had made him talk. They didn't even know his name.

Oh, well, Hughes thought. It was only a matter of time. Everyone breaks in the end.

"Asif, we need to break him before we go."

"He's in pretty bad shape. He soon won't be able to talk at all if we keep up like this."

Hughes didn't say anything, just looked at him.

"Alright, fine. I'll get someone to go down."

Davison's team had cleared the first floor and was proceeding on the second. So far the silencers had done a good job suppressing their presence and whoever heard them and came out of their rooms and saw them was restrained. If anyone carried a gun he was shot on sight. There could be no risks involved if someone could alert the others and one of them was prepared to blow the whole house sky high. So far they had disabled the detonators of five big bulks of C4 along their path.

Iqbal Majid just finished a conversation with Asif. Though it was a bit early in the day he and al-Maut wanted to speed up the process of extracting information from their unknown prisoner. He was going to play all-in this time. He promised Asif results tonight, and he was going to have them. This time he had thought up a few tricks that would bring those results.

He began walking down the stairs to the second floor but stopped halfway through when he heard footsteps. Too many people to be awake at this time of the night. He got a grip of his holstered pistol and kept walking down slowly. The only light that was coming into the house was from the moon.

As he was reaching the second floor and poked his head out he saw two men in battle gear holding rifles. One of them saw him and stopped. Iqbal immediately pulled back and started running upstairs.

"We've been made! X-ray has spotted us!" Mystic said.

"All teams go loud!" Iceman's voice sounded over the radio.

"Sector, throw a smoke," Mystic said to the other Red team member pointing halfway through the stairs.

Sector removed a smoke grenade from his waist and armed it. He threw it to the stairs. Seconds later that part of the stairwell filled with smoke. Red Team pressed a button on their goggles and their vision immediately changed from bright green to various shades of black, blue, yellow and red.

Iceman and Blue Team joined them "Floor clear!"

"She must be up there," Shredder said. The rest of the team also switched to thermal and scanned the stairwell as they were walking up.

"They're here!" shouted Majid. "The Americans!"

"Bloody hell." Asif responded and turned to face Hughes. "They'll be here in seconds."

Hughes stared at him and then a wall mounted bookshelf next to him. On it was a black plastic box with an extended antenna. She turned to face Asif again.

"You know what needs to happen."

"I'll do it." Asif grabbed the detonator. "Even if they found the other bombs and disabled them, we've got enough explosives in this room. Half of the house will go up."

He lifted up the detonator at chest level. They kissed.

"May God have mercy on us".

Hughes smiled, tears in her eyes. "Let's give 'em fucking hell babe!"

The loud bang sent a shock wave to the pair and Majid. All three were too preoccupied with their imminent deaths by explosion to even acknowledge the flashbang that was thrown in the room.

Iceman fired two shots exploding Asif's head. Ghost followed with another two on Majid's chest. The remote detonator fell on the floor and split open.

Hughes, who shook the shock from the flash bang off her went for the detonator a few feet away from her but was stopped by Ghost who hit her in the head with his rifle's butt. She fell on the floor screaming and bleeding.

"Shut up!" Iceman shouted. Mystic and Ghost held her down while Iceman tied her hands behind her back with a pair of plastic handcuffs removed from his uniform.

"Good work, Ghost", Iceman said

"You too sir"

Davison nodded and spoke on his radio mike. "X-Ray One is secure and ready for transport."

**21:55**

**The White House Situation Room**

"The team reports success, sir. The target has been captured." General Wright said.

Everyone clapped.

President Aguilar smiled. "Great work everyone. Great work. Amy casualties on our side?"

"None, Mr President"

Secretary Jones looked at the President with a look of satisfaction on her face.

"Well, " the President said, "let our boys and girls now carry on. I guess Operation Loki Scepter is now over."

General Wright nodded. "Yes sir. The prisoner will be transferred to..."

"I don't think the President needs to know that, General, " Secretary Jones interrupted, "as he should be able to deny everything that has just transpired."

**Banaadir, Somalia**

"Lead, this is Team Green", Demon's voice sounded crackling through the radio.

"Go, Green."

"Sir, we've just cleared the last room in the basement. There's something here I think you should see."

"Roger that, we're on our way." He looked at the tied up Hughes. "Grab her", he snarled.

"No! Asif!" she screamed looking down at the dead man lying in a pool of blood. She looked at Iceman, eyes full of hate. "You fucking pigs!"

"Shut your fucking mouth!" Shredder shouted grabbing her arm lifting her with Ghost. He looked at her bloody face. "'Fore I smash your head in."

Demon had just untied the man in the dark cell in the basement when the rest of the team walked in.

"Who is that?" Iceman asked

"We found him here, sir. It looks like he was being kept prisoner", Demon replied.

The man was naked and curbed into the fetal position. He had bruises and blood all over his body. Demon's Green teammate, Sabre, was examining the man's face with a small torch.

"Has he said anything?" He asked Demon.

"No, sir. I don't think he's in position to..."

"Who... who are you?"

Everybody looked at the man on the floor.

"He sounds American. " Shredder said.

"I am American, " the man said. "Are you special forces?" he could barely lay down a sentence and it took him seconds to complete his phrase.

"Sir, we are with the US Naval Special Forces Development Group. We found you here but we didn't expect to find American prisoners. What is your name?" Iceman asked.

When he didn't get a response he asked again. "Sir, what is your name?"

This time the man responded. "My name is Jack Bauer."


End file.
